


Safety in Small Numbers

by TheLongDefeat



Series: Cat and Mouse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cat and Mouse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 07:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLongDefeat/pseuds/TheLongDefeat
Summary: We can't help who we love.Molly Hooper is poor, plain, and little, but her eyes are sharp, and Moriarty has always been expert at finding hidden things.





	Safety in Small Numbers

They sit in a small booth towards the back of the little restaurant, a damp smoky hole-in-the-wall that Molly didn’t really show many people because it wasn’t much to show. Jim had liked it, though. Jim had liked everything.

 

He is moody tonight. He sits with his knees bent up and his chin resting atop them like a child, facing away from her, his sullen profile accentuated by the greenish cast of the chandelier above their heads. His dark eyes are half-masted, his mouth drooping. He taps his fingers against his trainers and sighs whimsically every few minutes.

 

Molly saws off little bits of her sausages and tucks them onto her fork. Eats them. Takes a sip of water. She supposes she should say something but can think of nothing worth saying. Her wrist cramps, and she hisses a little, rubbing at it.

 

She does not see or hear him move; she merely senses, she must, because the only thing that he has done is slide his large eyes sidelong to look at her, but she is aware of it all the same. “What happened to your hand?”

 

“Coulson knocked into me when he was on his way back to the lab and I fell.”

 

Jim watches her fingers kneading into the tendons at the base of her wrist, his expression fathomless. He grinds his jaw back and forth, watching her with wide ghoulish innocence in his face. “Coulson called you ugly, right there in front of everyone,” Jim says, and his voice is strange, almost musical. “But you didn’t say anything.”

 

Molly stops rubbing her wrist and looks away sharply. She can feel the heat blooming across her face and  _ hates it _ . “You didn’t say anything either.”

 

Jim’s lips curl, just at the edges, like burnt paper. “He won’t bother you again.” 

 

He says it with a finality that almost makes Molly laugh. As it is, a chill rushes across her skin and she wonders if this restaurant has a draft.  

 

They lapse into silence again. Molly finishes her meal and the waitress comes to take their plates; Jim’s fish and chips are untouched. He gazes off listlessly into space even as the waitress comes back with the cheque, so Molly pays it. 

 

“I played a joke today,” Jim says as Molly pulls on her jacket and closes her purse. She looks up in surprise, but he is unmoved, his expression still quiet and sad and strangely empty. “I thought it was quite funny but nobody laughed.”

 

Molly stands, not quite sure what to say to that. He follows her movement and she’s hit with a sudden wave of affectionate for this peculiar puppy of a man, his pouting mouth, his mournful brown eyes. She bends forward and kisses his forehead.

 

He blinks at her, and his eyebrows notch together. “What was that for?” he asks her, nearly whinging, his lilting voice rising and falling like a poem. 

 

She lifts one shoulder. She supposes she should be self-conscious but she isn’t. Jim tends to have that effect on her. “Not for anything. I just think you’re sweet.”

 

He eyes her like he’s trying to guess her trick before shrugging himself and unfolding from the booth. She starts for the door and he slouches after her. 

 

They wait at the curb for a cabbie. Jim casts her furtive sideways looks before sighing again. “Sorry I’ve been such a bore tonight, Molly.”

 

She blushes again (stupid!) and shakes her head. “It’s not your job to entertain me, Jim.”

 

His mouth rakes up at the corner, an eerie looking thing she wouldn’t quite call a smile; closer to the pale wince of a corpse. “What am I, if I’m not entertaining?” He leans over and presses a kiss to the side of her face that is shockingly warm. She can feel the bristle of the short black hairs growing on his cheeks. 

 

“You can come over tonight, if you like.” She’s not really sure why she offers; not because she wants him, not even because she wants him to like her. More because he seems to  _ need _ it, the way one takes a filthy stray off the street and cleans him and feeds him and loves him - not out of some expectation of benefit, but simply because one  _ must _ . 

 

He rests his dull, heavy gaze on her a moment before nodding as though agreeing to do her a favour. She flags a cabbie and they ride silently to her flat, his eyes trained on his shoes, shoulders bowed, elbows tucked into his sides. So small. Feeling bold, she reaches up and strokes the soft downy hairs at the nape of his neck. He does not react.

 

Back in her flat she makes tea which he does not drink. He is nestled into her couch staring blankly at the telly. She turns it on so that he doesn’t look quite so mad, and sits beside him. It’s a late night playing of  _ The Shining _ . “Oh,” she says, and reaches for the remote.

 

“No,” he says, and his voice startles her, high and sharp like something breaking. “Leave it.”

 

She frowns at him. “It frightens me.”

 

He does not look, only gives a single half-way shake of his head. “You’re with me, Molly. No one can touch you.” He says this in that same odd voice of his - so flat and final, like reading words off a page.

 

_ You can’t know that _ , she wants to say, but somehow she thinks maybe he can. He’s not like other blokes, Jim; so soft and yet, in his softness, more powerful than you’d think. Gives way like water right up until he drowns you. 

 

She falls asleep to the throbbing unseemly music of the film, and dreams restlessly. Wakes once in the middle of the night, the whole flat dark except the low dancing lights of the telly throwing long finger-like shadows on the wall, and as her eyes adjust she notices Jim is not watching the telly anymore. He is watching her instead, silent, his face as cool as marble, his eyes deeper than oceans. He is watching her: she is a mystery of God, a Picasso; something to be studied, examined, but never truly understood. His gaze notches like a microscope, lens atop lens, until she is sure he can see her cells dividing. 

 

“Sleep, Molly,” he says suddenly, and she jumps. “Hush. You’re safe with me.”

 

For some reason she can’t decipher, she believes him and obeys.

 

~*~ 

 

In the morning he is gone. She showers, dresses, goes to work. One of her DB’s has an anomaly in his heart valves that she thinks Sherlock might find interesting, so she texts him a photo. Fifteen minutes later her phone buzzes:

 

_ Has Coulson bothered you today? _

 

Molly blinks down uncomprehendingly before realizing the text is from Jim, not Sherlock. She frowns against a tight little feeling of disappointment like a pebble in her shoe. Types:  _ No Coulson isn’t in today. _

 

A minute later:  _ Out sick? _

 

She types:  _ I don’t know. I guess he was AWOL this morning. Good riddance lol _

 

Fifteen seconds:  _ Yes :) _

 

Molly laughs softly to herself. Pauses. Scrolls up and rereads his texts. She feels something niggling at the back of her a brain, an itch she can’t quite scratch. 

 

She levels the scalpel against her last post-mortem of the day. Applies pressure. The flesh parts beneath her blade like cold ham. 

 

_ He won’t bother you again. _

 

The words are steam rising up off the cool water of her thoughts. Molly’s scalpel stops moving. She stares down into the fleshy pallid face of Mrs. Morrison. “That doesn’t mean anything,” Molly says. “I’m being mad.”

 

Mrs. Morrison gazes back indifferently.

 

Molly’s phone buzzes again. Molly starts, scalpel falling with a clatter onto the steel autopsy table. Snaps off her gloves and fishes her mobile from her lab coat pocket. 

 

Jim:  _ Nobody touches my Molly. _

 

Molly reads the text. Rereads it. Draws in a small breath, presses Delete, and puts her phone back in her pocket. Pulls out a fresh pair of gloves. Picks up her scalpel. 

 

Her heart is pounding, blood rushing in her ears, and there’s something brittle inside her chest like blown glass. It feels strange, but Molly likes it. 

 

~*~

 

Gay.

 

Molly slams the drawer of her desk closed. Locks it. She stacks her finished paperwork and then reorganizes it. 

 

It could not be true. It could not be. The way Jim had - so fierce, so passionate - and why? Why fake it? It didn’t make any sense. 

 

But.

 

“Mols?” 

 

Molly drops her office key into the little pouch of her lab coat. She looks up slowly, slowly, knowing her cheeks are dappled with roses, knowing her brow is stitched tight as a wound. “Hello, Jim.”

 

He is hunched in her doorway, his small shoulders stooped, his wide eyes blinking. “Something wrong?”

 

Molly tries to smile, and feels the grimace stretch too wide across her teeth. “No, no. Course not. Thought we were meeting at the restaurant?”

 

Jim smiles back and gives a twitching shrug. “Yeah. Ah. Sorry. Just, um, was a bit slow and thought I’d, you know. Say hello. Sorry. It’s a bad time. I’ll, em, I’ll go -”

 

“No, wait!” Molly stands up suddenly, her chair knocking against the wall. They both jump a little at the sound. “Don’t go,” she tries more softly. “Please come in. I’m just, well, you know how Sherlock can be.”

 

Jim bobs his head up and down, smiling goofily. “Oh yeah, was a bit aloof, wasn’t he?”

 

Molly cannot help the way her cheeks bloom with colour. Jim’s smile fades.

 

“Did he say something, Molly? Something to upset you?”

 

She opens her mouth to deny it, but - “He said you were gay.” Horrified, she claps her hand across her (small, thin, colourless) lips. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I--”

 

Jim’s expression tightens, fractures, gives way; something feline moves beneath, unseen but felt, bones sliding under skin. He crosses the room in two strides and seizes her shoulders. “Did you believe him, Molly?”

 

“ _ NO! _ ” she exclaims, knowing, as the cry leaves her mouth, that she has damned herself. “Well, but…”

 

“But he’s Sherlock,” Jim provides. Even now, being kind to her. “And goodness knows you prefer Sherlock above all else, trust him above all else, even though you are nothing more to him than a lock to be turned and unturned at his whim?” He holds up her office keys. She had not noticed him taking them. “Such devotion, Molly. And in return, all you get is scorn.” His voice rises and falls across his words like a dancer. 

 

“You gave him your number.”

 

Jim leans a little forward to rest his warm forehead against hers. His large, colorless eyes are all she could see: two twin stars - and yet not stars, no, not stars but black holes, collapsing forever inward, infinitely dense, infinitely attractive, the pull so strong not even time itself could escape. “Did I?”

 

She cannot answer. He forgives her yet again, and presses a kiss to her mouth. His small body follows suit to align against her, a soft hot streak. He backs her three steps into her desk. 

 

All at once he breaks away and steps back two paces. He slouches there, eyeing her sidelong like a fat cat debating the merits of a mouse. His drooping mouth is downturned. “Take off your clothes.”

 

Molly blinks, shocked. Hot and cold prickle her from scalp to toes. “Sorry?”

 

“You  _ heard _ me,” he sings, lolling his head back on his shoulders. “Do as I say, Mols.”

 

She cannot, she will not, and yet resistance is impossible; the desire to obey is overwhelming. She reaches up and undoes one button. Jim’s eyes flash in greedy pleasure. She moves down her blouse, pop pop pop, and oh, it is a release all of its own: to yield, to bend. He holds her sin in his hands and vows redemption - or, if not that, at least consumption. 

 

He stands, dangling and loose-limbed, as she strips to her knickers. His expression is impassive and she feels her flesh pimple with humiliation and exhilaration. Is he gay after all, then? Totally unmoved? Or maybe it’s not him, it’s her; plain, simple, boring - “On your knees.”

 

She tries her swallow but her throat sticks. Her heart beats like a drum in her chest. She drops.

 

“Come to me.” Confused, she starts to stand - “No. Crawl.”

 

She reaches him and stops. She wants to touch him but worries it might make him angry. She is not a coward, though, and reaches up to cradle his hips. He smiles down at her languidly, trailing one finger through her bangs. 

 

“What a good girl you are, Molly Hooper.” He cups the hand that is resting on his left hip and shifts it to the front of his trousers. Molly’s stomach seizes, twists, eating itself up with want. “Do you believe him now?” Jim whispers.

 

Molly, mouth too dry to speak, shakes her head. 

 

Jim’s lips twitch at the edges. His expression is heroin, is liquid sex. The fingers in her hair drag across her jaw, linger by her pulse, shivering against the throbbing flesh there. “Are you afraid?” Molly dips her cheek into his warm, dry palm. All at once Jim is kneeling before her, cupping her face, and his eyes are strangely hungry. “I won’t hurt you like Sherlock does,” he says, his musical voice deeper than she’s used to. He looks away briefly and laughs, low and soft, at some private joke. Glances back at her. “That’s something you can believe in, Molly.”

 

He leans in, devours. 

 

~*~

 

The door rings, and Jim offers to answer it. She hears his cheerful greeting, and he returns to the kitchen a minute later with a suitcase under either arm.

 

“Oh! She’s early!” Molly side steps the counter and goes to her sister. Margaret clamors into the foyer, car seat dangling off one elbow, the other arm clutching a diaper bag.

 

“Molly!” she cries, dropping her things. “Oh, so good to see you.”

 

They hug, kiss. Molly introduces Jim to Margaret, Jim to Charlie. Margaret collapses onto the sofa just as the baby in the car seat begins to howl. The colour drains from Margaret’s face and she clenches her eyes shut. Molly thinks she should offer - offer  _ something  _ -

 

Jim steps forward. He scoops the tiny little person up into his two hands, grinning like a dog, and cradles the infant against his chest like he’s precious. Jim starts a lazy waltz around the living room, singing tunelessly, and the baby gazes up at him in rapture, his slitted milky eyes fixing on Jim’s face, on his smiling mouth. Margaret and Molly watch silently.

 

“Good with kids,” Margaret says finally, giving Molly an approving look that makes Molly’s stomach twist unpleasantly.

 

Jim sways in place, still crooning. “Always loved babies,” he says, speaking into the downy hairs that cling to his lips. He trails a finger down Charlie’s tiny nose, teases across the rosebud mouth. “So  _ helpless _ .” 

 

Margaret relaxes into the couch, clearly relieved to have someone take a turn with her baby. Molly does not follow suit. She sits straight, watches Jim sing to her nephew and does not look away.

 

~*~

 

She sleeps soundly after a long day at work. The morgue is short-staffed; Coulson has apparently permanently left the country, relocated to Indonesia, if she recalls correctly. She won’t miss the bastard but her workload has doubled. Meanwhile, Sherlock has been keyed up by his ‘delightfully interesting’ case and when he’s not relaxed nobody is. There’s been something frantic in his icy eyes that unsettles her; something ravenous. A low hum of electricity seemed to follow to him and he kept muttering about  _ the game, the game, the game _ , and something - she could not say what - made Molly want to say  _ you’re not playing, Sherlock, you’re being played.  _ But of course she didn’t. 

 

So instead she drools contently into her pillow; she was fairly gutted when Jim dropped off the face of the earth but she can’t regret the freedom to sprawl out on her mattress and sleep comfortably for the first time in weeks. Singledom has its perks. 

 

But she wakes in the dead of night, her skin prickled, her heart pounding. The room is black as ink and quiet. Still as deep water. Molly feels a tremor of dread crawl down her spine. 

 

“Fi-i-inally.”

 

It’s a breathy, long-suffering sigh, whimsical and almost laughing. Molly’s fists clench into her bedsheets. “Jim?”

 

“No,” he laughs, “it’s the boogieman. Boo!” Two hot hands clutch her shoulders; Molly gives a violent jerk and he laughs again. His voice echoes off the walls of her room that are suddenly too dark, too close.

 

“How did you get in here?” She claws her way upright, shivering as her blankets pool at her waist. Her naked skin gleams like ivory in the moonlight. His eyes, two dark stones in his pale face, take her in with an almost perfunctory leisure.

 

“Oh Molly,” he says airily, “I’m an alleycat, sweetheart. I go where I like when I like.” He stops suddenly, going very, very still. “Are you afraid of me?”

 

Molly blinks. Considers. “No,” she owns at last, surprised. “I’m worried though.”

 

He squints. “Worried?” he echoes, his tone displeased, like she is being purposefully deceptive.

 

“Worried about you,” she clarifies.

 

“No one can hurt me,” he says, and if she didn’t know better she’d say he sounded almost disappointed.

 

“You don’t seem very happy.”

 

He cocks his head like a spaniel. Shrugs diffidently. “Well, I suppose this is me off,” he says at length, as though they were having a spot of tea. “Tell Sherlock I said hi, won’t you dear?”

 

He rises and his small stooped body recedes into the clinging shadows of her bedroom. “Jim,” she says. She can’t see him, but she knows, all the same, that he is waiting. “Why did you come here?”

 

A long silence answers her. She wonders if her guess was wrong, and he’s already left, soft and silent as a cat; or if, perhaps more likely, he was never here to begin with. “I’m not entirely sure.” His voice greets her, twinkling like the waters of a quick stream. “I suppose I’m a bit fond of you,” he says, chuckling at the absurdity. “You’re so… cozy.”

 

Molly shakes her head. She is suddenly very cross, and very tired. “Well, if you’re here, you might as well come to bed.” She folds down her quilt.

 

“Might I?” he parries in that same laughing voice. But a moment later her mattress dips, and his soft, warm body is there at her shoulder. She curls into it. His hands play lightly at the notches of her spine like the keys of a piano. “You’ll be his favourite, you know, someday,” Jim muses, and Molly does not try to guess who or what he is talking about. “He’d be very upset, I think, if something happened to you. And yes, so guilty, so guilty, his little mouse getting stepped on, and he’d be so sad, realize he’d never paid her enough mind, never looked into her round eyes, never listened to her sweet voice, and now he’s missed his chance, she’s dead as a doornail - dead as a dormouse! - all because of him, because of him... Oh, it’d be delicious. But…” Jim clucks like a chicken and pinches her. Molly squirms. He giggles into her ear, his hot breath streaking down her neck. “But no. No. You’re sort of  _ funny _ , aren’t you? You’re  _ boring _ , of course. Dreadfully boring. But I think I like you right here in your little bed, little Molly, tucked away and soft and snug as a bug in a rug. Sweet little Molly Hooper. Not enough sweet things in the world.” He kisses the shell of her ear. “If I would ever love anything, it’d be something soft and sweet like you.” 

 

Molly stares up at him in shock. It occurs to her, not for the first time, that she does not know this man at all. “Who are you?”

 

He looks at her for a long, long time. His expression is soft and oddly sad. “I’m nobody, Molly. I’m a ghost. Go to sleep, precious girl. Nobody’s ever going to hurt you.”

 

Molly draws in a long breath. “Don’t do anything stupid, Jim,” she murmurs. “I worry about you.”

 

He presses his mouth to her forehead. “I promise,” he says.

 

When she wakes in the morning he’s gone, and she’s not really sure he was ever there at all.

 

~*~

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
